Art not Oil – Liberate Tate

“Loughborough University’s Anarchism Research Group and Politicized Practice Research Group host an evening with Liberate Tate as part of their Critical Citizenship, Activism and Art, a series of seminars and events to showcase and critically discuss art activists’ efforts to give a voice to the excluded, promote inclusive alternatives, and enrich global culture and citizenship.

Liberate Tate is an art collective exploring the role of creative intervention in social change. The group aims to “free art from oil” with a primary focus on the art museum Tate ending its corporate sponsorship with BP. Liberate Tate has become internationally renowned for artworks about the relationship of public cultural institutions with oil companies. The collective was founded during a Tate workshop in January 2010 on art and activism. When Tate curators tried to censor the workshop from making interventions against Tate sponsors, even though none had been planned, the participants decided to continue their work together and set up Liberate Tate. Their performances have included a 64 square meter interpretation of Malevich’s Black Square in the Tate Turbine Hall, the installation of a 16 m wind turbine blade in Tate Modern, and pouring oil over a naked male curled up on the floor of the Duveen Gallery in Tate Britain on the anniversary of the BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. Liberate Tate will present documentation from their five years of performance-interventions, alongside a discussion of their methodology and how cultural institutions play an important role in the normalisation of the environmental and human rights abuses of oil companies.”